The Order: 1886 First Screenshot Analysis

The Order: 1886 has been somewhat elusive since its announcement at E3 2013 but today we have the first batch of screenshots from the game for your viewing pleasure. We hardly know anything about this game, but let’s have a stab at what we’re going to see in The Order: 1886.

First seen on Gameinformer, the screens give us a small taste at the what the gameplay could be like. Developer Ready at Dawn have already confirmed it to be an action adventure title, but that could mean anything from Uncharted style gameplay to God of War style. In a video interview also by Gameinformer, Ru Weerasuriya, the game’s creative director and Andrea Pessino, Ready at Dawn’s chief technology officer discuss how important the game’s story is but rather than being fed to you, the Order is all about discovery and finding out the history of this world for yourself.

This method of storytelling something we’ve seen before in games such as Resistance with intel files and The Last of Us with letters and other collectibles. It’s a tried and tested form of interactive storytelling but that’s not to say it doesn’t work very well when it’s done right.

The screens tell us that The Order: 1886 is a third person shooter, at least in part. The announcement trailer from E3 showed some very big guns which we can see the protagonist Galahad equipped with in these screens. The particular screenshot seems to hold horror elements of some kind. Though the game is officially classed as “action-adventure” by its developer, this doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t have different gameplay elements. Even the first Uncharted flirted with horror in some capacity.

The enemies players will be fighting in The Order are known as “half-breeds,” a cross between humans and mutants of some kinds. In the trailer they looked fairly animalistic in movement and were agile and quick. This is all mere speculation but they would make for good horror enemies like Dead Space’s Necromorphs which can be jump around all over the place in that franchise.

The screenshots in the Gameinformer piece leave little room for concrete evidence there’s plenty to speculate about. Out of the six screenshots here, five of them show Galahad in rooms free of any type of life indicating he’s searching these locations. Given how Galahad and his fellow knights act as a form of resistance against the half-breeds, it’s likely they’re more of a reactionary force, the idea of which gets stronger the more you look at these screens and how they were attacked in the trailer. The character looks to be investigating or searching rather than acting aggressively or preemptively towards his enemy. However, the knights seem to be very good at their job given the mess they make in the trailer.

The story behind The Order: 1886 is that mankind and the half-breeds have been at war for over 1000 years and it’s quite possible mankind is losing the fight.

What’s immediately obvious about The Order is that it looks fantastic. According to Ready at Dawn’s Andrea Pessino, the visually impressive debut trailer was captured using in-game technology. It’s a quite a step forward for a developer who used to make games for the PSP only.

The woman seen in this screenshot looks to be the same colleague of Galahad’s seen in the E3 trailer where the protagonist and three other knights including this woman and two other men are attack in London by the half-breeds. The character’s name is Isabeau D’Argyll who goes by the name of “Lady Ingraine.”D’Argyll looks to be investigating an incident of some kind thus backing up the theory that The Order will feature a horror element of some kind. It’s dark and they’ve only got one light source each, that’s just asking for something to jump out at them.

Horror doesn’t seem to be the only theme in The Order: 1886 however. As the screenshot above indicates; you will be shot at during some point in the game. The game is described as action-adventure after all. Whilst we’ve seen hundreds of third-person shooters over the years, it does raise questions as to whether you’ll just be fighting half-breeds in The Order or whether the half-breeds are capable of using weapons.

The creatures seen in the trailer looked fairly dumb as they threw themselves at Galahad and his fellow knights which resulted in some quick deaths for them. Could it be there are different castes of half-breeds?

Right now we don’t know a whole lot but we are sure to find out more post Playstation 4 launch.